Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• The $g$-function and defect changing operators from wavefunction overlap on a fuzzy sphere

  Zheng Zhou, Davide Gaiotto, Yin-Chen He, Yijian Zou

  SciPost Phys. 17, 021 (2024) · published 25 July 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Defects are common in physical systems with boundaries, impurities or extensive measurements. The interaction between bulk and defect can lead to rich physical phenomena. Defects in gapless phases of matter with conformal symmetry usually flow to a defect conformal field theory (dCFT). Understanding the universal properties of dCFTs is a challenging task. In this paper, we propose a computational strategy applicable to a line defect in arbitrary dimensions. Our main assumption is that the defect has a UV description in terms of a local modification of the Hamiltonian so that we can compute the overlap between low-energy eigenstates of a system with or without the defect insertion. We argue that these overlaps contain a wealth of conformal data, including the $g$-function, which is an RG monotonic quantity that distinguishes different dCFTs, the scaling dimensions of defect creation operators $\Delta^{+0}_\alpha$ and changing operators $\Delta^{+-}_\alpha$ that live on the intersection of different types of line defects, and various OPE coefficients. We apply this method to the fuzzy sphere regularization of 3D CFTs and study the magnetic line defect of the 3D Ising CFT. Using exact diagonalization and DMRG, we report the non-perturbative results $g=0.602(2),\Delta^{+0}_0=0.108(5)$ and $\Delta^{+-}_0=0.84(5)$ for the first time. We also obtain other OPE coefficients and scaling dimensions. Our results have significant physical implications. For example, they constrain the possible occurrence of spontaneous symmetry breaking at line defects of the 3D Ising CFT. Our method can be potentially applied to various other dCFTs, such as plane defects and Wilson lines in gauge theories.

  16 citations

• An optimal observable for color singlet identification

  Andy Buckley, Giuseppe Callea, Andrew J. Larkoski, Simone Marzani

  SciPost Phys. 9, 026 (2020) · published 26 August 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a novel approach to construct a color tagger, i.e. an observable that is able to discriminate the decay of a color-singlet into two jets from a two-jet background in a different color configuration. We do this by explicitly taking the ratio of the corresponding leading-order matrix elements in the soft limit, thus obtaining an observable that is provably optimal within our approximation. We call this observable the "jet color ring" and we compare its performance to other color-sensitive observables such as jet pull and dipolarity. We also assess the performance of the jet color ring in simulations by applying it to the case of the hadronic decays of a boosted Higgs boson and of an electroweak boson.

  16 citations

• Duality and mock modularity

  Atish Dabholkar, Pavel Putrov, Edward Witten

  SciPost Phys. 9, 072 (2020) · published 13 November 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We derive a holomorphic anomaly equation for the Vafa-Witten partition function for twisted four-dimensional $\mathcal{N} =4$ super Yang-Mills theory on $\mathbb{CP}^{2}$ for the gauge group $SO(3)$ from the path integral of the effective theory on the Coulomb branch. The holomorphic kernel of this equation, which receives contributions only from the instantons, is not modular but `mock modular'. The partition function has correct modular properties expected from $S$-duality only after including the anomalous nonholomorphic boundary contributions from anti-instantons. Using M-theory duality, we relate this phenomenon to the holomorphic anomaly of the elliptic genus of a two-dimensional noncompact sigma model and compute it independently in two dimensions. The anomaly both in four and in two dimensions can be traced to a topological term in the effective action of six-dimensional (2,0) theory on the tensor branch. We consider generalizations to other manifolds and other gauge groups to show that mock modularity is generic and essential for exhibiting duality when the relevant field space is noncompact.

  16 citations

• Chiral higher spin gravity and convex geometry

  Alexey Sharapov, Evgeny Skvortsov, Richard van Dongen

  SciPost Phys. 14, 162 (2023) · published 20 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Chiral Higher Spin Gravity is the minimal extension of the graviton with propagating massless higher spin fields. It admits any value of the cosmological constant, including zero. Its existence implies that Chern-Simons vector models have closed subsectors and supports the $3d$ bosonization duality. In this letter, we explicitly construct an $A_\infty$-algebra that determines all interaction vertices of the theory. The algebra turns out to be of pre-Calabi-Yau type. The corresponding products, some of which originate from Shoikhet-Tsygan-Kontsevich formality, are given by integrals over the configuration space of convex polygons.

  16 citations

• Massive Corrections to Entanglement in Minimal E8 Toda Field Theory

  Olalla A. Castro-Alvaredo

  SciPost Phys. 2, 008 (2017) · published 28 February 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In this letter we study the exponentially decaying corrections to saturation of the second R\'enyi entropy of one interval of length L in minimal E8 Toda field theory. It has been known for some time that the entanglement entropy of a massive quantum field theory in 1+1 dimensions saturates to a constant value for m1 L <<1 where m1 is the mass of the lightest particle in the spectrum. Subsequently, results by Cardy, Castro-Alvaredo and Doyon have shown that there are exponentially decaying corrections to this behaviour which are characterised by Bessel functions with arguments proportional to m1 L. For the von Neumann entropy the leading correction to saturation takes the precise universal form -K0(2m1 L)/8 whereas for the R\'enyi entropies leading corrections which are proportional to K0(m1 L) are expected. Recent numerical work by P\'almai for the second R\'enyi entropy of minimal E8 Toda has found next-to-leading order corrections decaying as exp(-2m1 L) rather than the expected exp(-m1 L). In this paper we investigate the origin of this result and show that it is incorrect. An exact form factor computation of correlators of branch point twist fields reveals that the leading corrections are proportional to K0(m1 L) as expected.

  16 citations

• Indirect searches for dark matter bound state formation and level transitions

  Iason Baldes, Francesca Calore, Kalliopi Petraki, Vincent Poireau, Nicholas L. Rodd

  SciPost Phys. 9, 068 (2020) · published 10 November 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Indirect searches for dark matter (DM) have conventionally been applied to the products of DM annihilation or decay. If DM couples to light force carriers, however, it can be captured into bound states via dissipation of energy that may yield detectable signals. We extend the indirect searches to DM bound state formation and transitions between bound levels, and constrain the emission of unstable dark photons. Our results significantly refine the predicted signal flux that could be observed in experiments. As a concrete example, we use Fermi-LAT dwarf spheroidal observations to obtain constraints in terms of the dark photon mass and energy which we use to search for the formation of stable or unstable bound states.

  16 citations

• Pairing patterns in one-dimensional spin- and mass-imbalanced Fermi gases

  Lukas Rammelmüller, Joaquín E. Drut, Jens Braun

  SciPost Phys. 9, 014 (2020) · published 28 July 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study spin- and mass-imbalanced mixtures of spin-$\tfrac{1}{2}$ fermions interacting via an attractive contact potential in one spatial dimension. Specifically, we address the influence of unequal particle masses on the pair formation by means of the complex Langevin method. By computing the pair-correlation function and the associated pair-momentum distribution we find that inhomogeneous pairing is present for all studied spin polarizations and mass imbalances. To further characterize the pairing behavior, we analyze the density-density correlations in momentum space, the so-called shot noise, which is experimentally accessible through time-of-flight imaging. At finite spin polarization, the latter is known to show distinct maxima at momentum configurations associated with the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) instability. Besides those maxima, we find that additional features emerge in the noise correlations when mass imbalance is increased, revealing the stability of FFLO-type correlations against mass imbalance and furnishing an experimentally accessible signature to probe this type of pairing.

  16 citations

• Actual Physics behind Mono-X

  Elias Bernreuther, Jan Horak, Tilman Plehn, Anja Butter

  SciPost Phys. 5, 034 (2018) · published 17 October 2018 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Mono-X searches are standard dark matter search strategies at the LHC. First, we show how in the case of initial state radiation they essentially collapse to mono-jet searches. Second, we systematically study mono-X signatures from decays of heavier dark matter states. Direct detection constraints strongly limit our MSSM expectations, but largely vanish for mono-Z and mono-Higgs signals once we include light NMSSM mediators. Finally, the decay topology motivates mono-W-pair and mono-Higgs-pair searches, strengthening and complementing their mono-X counterparts.

  16 citations

• DCore: Integrated DMFT software for correlated electrons

  Hiroshi Shinaoka, Junya Otsuki, Mitsuaki Kawamura, Nayuta Takemori, Kazuyoshi Yoshimi

  SciPost Phys. 10, 117 (2021) · published 27 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a new open-source program, DCore, that implements dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT). DCore features a user-friendly interface based on text and HDF5 files. It allows DMFT calculations of tight-binding models to be performed on predefined lattices as well as \textit{ab initio} models constructed by external density functional theory codes through the Wannier90 package. Furthermore, DCore provides interfaces to many advanced quantum impurity solvers such as quantum Monte Carlo and exact diagonalization solvers. This paper details the structure and usage of DCore and shows some applications.

  16 citations

• Weak ergodicity breaking in non-Hermitian many-body systems

  Qianqian Chen, Shuai A. Chen, Zheng Zhu

  SciPost Phys. 15, 052 (2023) · published 7 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The recent discovery of persistent revivals in the Rydberg-atom quantum simulator has revealed a weakly ergodicity-breaking mechanism dubbed quantum many-body scars, which are a set of nonthermal states embedded in otherwise thermal spectra. Until now, such a mechanism has been mainly studied in Hermitian systems. Here, we establish the non-Hermitian quantum many-body scars and systematically characterize their nature from dynamic revivals, entanglement entropy, physical observables, and energy level statistics. Notably, we find the non-Hermitian quantum many-body scars exhibit significantly enhanced coherent revival dynamics when approaching the exceptional point. The signatures of non-Hermitian scars switch from the real-energy axis to the imaginary-energy axis after a real-to-complex spectrum transition driven by increasing non-Hermiticity, where an exceptional point and a quantum tricritical point emerge simultaneously. We further examine the stability of non-Hermitian quantum many-body scars against external fields, reveal the non-Hermitian quantum criticality and eventually set up the whole phase diagram. The possible connection to the open quantum many-body systems is also explored. Our findings offer insights for realizing long-lived coherent states in non-Hermitian many-body systems.

  16 citations